manifesto.

So, friends, every day do something
that wont compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.

from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Wendell Berry, I apologize to you. I, no farmer at all (let alone a mad one), steal regularly from your manifesto. I remember giving it away - one of my favorites - for someone else to read one night. She hurled it at us, all breathy and urgent. Her first poetry reading. And it is a manifesto, worthy of impassioned expression. But our dear angst-ridden reader missed the wild, joyful abandonment the poem is really all about. This is no deathbed epilogue. It's a revolution against what we think is happiness; it catapults us forward into heady, unpredictable, savagely beautiful mystery.

This mystery is my point. My reason. I've learned more or less how to survive living by now; I can get through what comes. And although that's no simple feat, there is more and I want it. I seek out what's hard work, what's ridiculous and maybe impossible. I wondered with a friend recently whether our generation is too tired for conventional beauty, for coherent themes and familiar patterns. Instead we seek out a harsher version of loveliness - jarring, dissonant, strange beauty that leaves us with more questions than answers. I want the meanings which explode out of absurdity, truth which reveals itself all the more vibrantly because it arises from the incomprehensible.

Conventional wisdom still applies: often what seems nonsensical or unfeasible really is. But I'm a fervently optimistic realist. I'm not sorry when I don't succeed - or even terribly surprised - and I'm not sad when the nights are long. I've let go of life the way I expected it, finding the tenacity instead to live life as it's given, without answers. I'm striving still for the best it could be, although it would be easier to secede and self-protect. But, if you can find a way to hang on - you're sometimes gifted with the strangest, most unexpected loveliness. One you wouldn't have foreseen, one completely absurd, but which is entirely worthwhile.

you rock.

This blog's to say I love you. Because if you're reading this you're probably a friend, and lately I've had the surprising good fortune of learning (or remembering) what good friends I have.

Yooooouuu guys. Have got me covered. It's not often any of us gets chances to make it apparent, and I like to take care of everything myself, but how you've each stepped in and done that lately is more than I'd have asked for. You call and write and call again. You make a to-do over important things when I can't. You speak your mind instead of offering empty platitudes. You're smart, and funny. You know what I'm not saying. You give me credit for the fortitude and intuition to look after myself but you look after me anyway.

As ever, I'm fine, mostly. But because of you I'm also deeply blessed. There's something more than getting by. Which we all can do on our own. Sharing with wise, solid, vibrant people makes every experience better than a thing to be gotten through; it's a refreshing reason for living. A reminder of how good it is to love and be loved. All this to say that you, my dear friends, you rock. Thanks.

ferocious.

olderol also falderal n.
1. Foolishness; nonsense.

rubicon n.
1. A limit that when passed or exceeded permits of no return and typically results in irrevocable commitment.

vicissitude n.
1. a. A change or variation.
b. The quality of being changeable; mutability.
2. One of the sudden or unexpected changes or shifts often encountered in one's life, activities, or surroundings. Often used in the plural. See Synonyms: difficulty.

Rick Whitaker wrote that his best and worst times were almost simultaneous: that when he was living full-out with real ferocity he was also suffering from a crisis of hopelessness, wildly alive and nearly dead at the same time. But this kind of ferocity is a prison. There's no freedom in frantically living against the hopeless future bulging toward you. Instead. I think there's a wiser ferocity, propelled not by sheer force but by awareness. Intention. (I still call this ferocity: wisdom takes tenacity to turn into action.)

Wise ferocity doesn't wildly resist. It allows what is to be as it is. It goes where good sense sends it, like water to a valley. And one of life's best gifts is its endless mutability. What doesn't work can change, can always change. Following the path of these little vicissitudes reveals such unexpected blessings. While blind struggling breeds despair, giving in, surprisingly, can turn hopelessness completely on its head.